Heal
by JusttMee123
Summary: She's gone. The thought echoes in his mind and a sharp pain begins to throb behind his eyes. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
1. Chapter 1

_She's gone._

The thought repeated itself over and over again in his mind. It echoed and bounced around the walls of his skull, and a sharp pain was beginning to throb behind his eyes. He rubs gently at his eyes, trying to make it go away, but it only gets worse.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

She was supposed to still be here. She was supposed to come back from the mission with the rest of them, their team, and unwind with them at the tower. It was her turn to pick the movie that night. She was supposed to stretch out on the couch with her head in his lap and her feet in Clint's. He was supposed to play with her hair while she stole popcorn from Tony, and he would have complained but no one would do anything about it because they knew she'd kill them with just her toes if they did.

She was supposed to sneak into his bed in the middle of the night, like she had been doing for the past few months, because she couldn't sleep and then flick milky cereal bits across the table at him the next morning. He was supposed to have years with her, decades to make memories.

But instead she's somewhere in SHIELD headquarters, on a cold metal slab in the morgue.

She's gone.

He's truly lost her.

* * *

Days pass and the dark clouds hanging over everyone in the tower seem like they're permanent.

Clint mostly just hides in the vents and no one has the heart to get him down because it was always Natasha who would climb up there and drag him back down to Earth. Tony's resorted to staying up all night again and building suits, putting a strain on his and Pepper's relationship once more. Personally he can't seem to stay asleep for more than three hours at a time, so he takes to polishing his shield and seeing if her can beat his old record of number of punching bags he can go through before the sun rises. Thor escaped back to Asgard the day after, and no one's really seen Bruce. The absence of the Hulk was comforting at first- at least they wouldn't have to fight their own teammate while mourning another. But at this point any sign that the doctor was indeed still alive could be a relief.

They weren't even allowed to see her body. Fury had forbidden it (he didn't really want to see her like that anyway) and the wake had been closed casket. It rained the day of her funeral and the five of them remaining had carried her casket to her grave.

He cried shamelessly through the entire thing.

He keeps expecting to see her. He's always so sure that it he turn the corner she'll be waiting for him, reading a book or arguing with Tony about who took apart the microwave this time. He randomly looks in closets, as if she'll jump out at him eventually and laugh at him for taking so long to find her.

He misses the old team dynamic. Sure, they were all so different and it was all too easy to step on someone's toes, but for the first time in a long time it had made him feel like he was home. This was his home and they were his family. And now they were broken and he didn't think anything could fix them. Not when there were only five of them, one one was currently in another realm.

Sometimes he sneaks into her room and just stands there. He doesn't dare move a single thing; everything is just as she left it the day she departed on a mission and didn't come home. Everything just screams Natasha and he likes to pretend that she's actually alive and just stepped out to take a shower or soak in the hot tub on the roof.

About two weeks after her death, he enters her room and leaves a small necklace on her nightstand. It's a simple thing, something he's had for a few weeks. He had intended to give it to her and then ask her out on a proper date, but for some reason or another he just never got around to it. And then everything fell to shit and he had no choice but to add her to his list of regrets. He's lost so many people, his parents and all his friends, Bucky…. Peggy and Natasha hurt the worst because they're the ones he let slip through his fingers and now there was nothing he could do.

He wished with all his heart that he could just reverse the clock.

Night time is the worst. Nights are when he feels the full impact of losing her, when he throws out his hand after waking from a nightmare and realizes she's not there anymore. Night is when all his ghosts return in his dreams and they all just stare at him with the saddest expressions. He drinks in all their faces, perfectly preserved by his subconscious, and tries to memorize every detail. His mother's smile, the exact color of Bucky's eyes, the set of Peggy's mouth, the flash of fire behind Natasha's eyes, Howard's sarcastic smirk…. He doesn't want to lose any of that.

So he studies them and when they start to walk away one at a time he knows he's starting to wake up. He always tries to hold on to them for as long as he can, reaching out to them and calling their names, because what if they don't come back one night? He doesn't want to feel the pain of losing them all twice. He doesn't think he could bear it all over again, all of them at once.


	2. Chapter 2

They live like that for a month.

They go on mourning, barely seeing each other, barely eating. Thor returns eventually but mostly keeps to himself and Steve's not completely sure when any of them spoke out loud last. Except maybe Tony, he's pretty sure Pepper would have forced him to talk by now. But he can count on one hand the number of times he himself said anything since Natasha's death.

He mostly wanders the tower on the nights he can't sleep. He's long since stopped being startled when he stumbles upon Clint in random places. His eyes are always open, something that made him nearly jump out of his skin the first few times. (He doesn't know how often the archer is actually awake when he finds him since he's infamous for falling asleep with his eyes open.) He's given up polishing his shield since most of the paint is now worn away, and he has to wait for the next shipment of punching bags Tony had to order since he kind of went through them all.

But then Pepper seems to get fed up with all of them. She forces them out of their beds and to the lounge on the common floor; she actually stands on the counter with a broom, banging on the vents until she manages to drive Clint out into the open. Somehow he's coerced into helping her cook a real dinner with her while she sends the others to shower, and when they come back she all but locks him in the bathroom. It takes a long time before he begins to feel human again, but when he emerges he feels a little better.

Pepper forces them to sit at the table and won't let them leave until all their plates are clean. They all just sort of pick at their food while Pepper's attempts to keep a conversation going fall short. He gives her credit, though, because she's actually _trying, _so he makes a few comments here and there, his heart not up to much more than that.

They all gather in the lounge after dinner and Pepper pops in a movie, The Shawshank Redemption, and curls up against Tony's side. He just sits there because that's what is expected of him at the time, only half watching, staring listlessly at the screen. Eventually they start falling asleep, leaning on each other and content to stay there. It's the first full night of sleep any of them have gotten and the best one they've had in a while despite waking up with sore backs and kinks in their necks.

After that night Pepper makes sure to keep them on a schedule, acting almost like a mother to them. Fury starts sending them on missions again. Nothing too big, just recovery missions they could all do in their sleep. The first time Steve is called into SHIELD HQ, he almost turns around and walks right back out. It takes every ounce of will power he has to look straight ahead at the elevator and keep moving in their direction.

Because if he looks to the left he'll see the Wall of Valor and the hundreds of flowers that have been left there, and he'll know that if he walks over there he'll see that her name has been added to the wall.

Later he goes back and leaves a single sunflower, her favorite.

He wonders where she is now, whether she's in Heaven. If there even is a Heaven, he's been beginning to question its existence. He wonders if she can see them, or if she watches out for them. Part of them hopes she does.

There are some days that are worse than others. Sometimes he's so sure she's just turned the corner or he can swear he just heard her laugh at him. Sometimes it just hits him that she's really gone forever, that she can't come back, and it feels like he's been punched in the gut. There are days when he misses her so much that he's certain that, if presented with the opportunity, he'd sell his soul and the soul of his first born child to the devil if it meant he could bring her back. Other times it feels like getting out of bed is simply impossible.

But he sticks to Pepper's schedules as best he can. He sometimes wonders how the hell she's managing to babysit all five of them at once, but when he asks she simply flicks him on the ear and tells him not to worry about it. He does, though, and starts trying to ease her burden as much as he can. He takes it upon himself to get the other Avengers out of bed in the morning, occasionally having to use her trick of banging on the nets with a broom to wake Clint, and helps cook breakfast. Sometimes their entire routine feels so normal he can pretend it's always been this way. But the guilt that accompanies that thought chokes him and makes him ashamed that he's thought it in the first place. It feels like he's trying to erase her.

Logically, he knows why this is affecting them all so much. It brings their own mortality to the forefront of the their minds. The Avengers are supposed to be the best of the best, Earth's mightiest heroes. But this just shows them that even they are only human and even the mighty Avengers can't cheat death. Not even the Black Widow, and if that doesn't send a message he doesn't know what will.

Logically, he knows this. But when he can see her absence as clearly as his own hand it's hard to keep from missing her. Part of it is also that he blames himself. He's the leader of their little rag tag team; he should have been able to protect her. He was too busy fighting in the streets to stop her from running into one of the buildings, in pursuit of some enemy that was trying to flee. He had every intention of going after her, but then he saw the grenade be tossed and felt the heat of the explosion and fire on his face.

Tony had to restrain him to keep him from charging into the building to look for her.

He wonders if she might have survived if he had been allowed to look for her.


	3. Chapter 3

She's safe.

When she has her doubts, when she thinks that maybe she made the wrong call, that's what she tells herself. She's safe, and by faking her death everyone she cares for is safe too. So while they're grieving and se's lonely and homesick, they're all out of harm's way.

It certainly doesn't make it any easier. She misses them all so much that it aches deep in her core. She shouldn't be fazed by this, her training in the Red Room made her used to the solitude. She was always best on solo missions, but her time at SHIELD has made her soft. She's gotten used to being a team player and depending on others to have her back. And the sudden absence of hat makes her head spin.

She finds herself missing the little things, like how Thor would often forget to use a coaster and left little coffee rings on the table, and how she could usually count on finding Tony passed out in his workshop in the morning. She misses watching Clint steal someone's glass of water and hide in the rafters, smirking at the squabble that was sure to follow. She misses curling up on the couch with Steve when she needed to just relax, and how he would never ask, he'd just wait until she spoke first.

She googles them occasionally and tries her best to keep tabs on them, but all the articles she can find online are through the eyes of the public, so they're not exactly the most reliable or thorough source. She can think of one way that would guarantee her any information she wants to know, but she figures hacking into SHIELD's database is a good way to start mass confusion and therefore absolutely out of the question. She may be curious and slight desperate, but she is by no means stupid.

It's a little unsettling when she can't find anything on them for months, no public sightings, not record of them at all. Just articles about her "death" and her obituary. It seems like all of them have just disappeared, and that sends a chill down her spine. It's so unlike any of them, especially Tony, attention whore that he is. She might have expected the Hulk to cause some sort of damage by now or someone else to do something that would catch the public's eye, but there's nothing but silence on their end. She knows that their missions aren't public knowledge to keep everyone safe and to keep the people from panicking, but nothing she reads indicates that any of the Avengers have even left the tower, let alone go gallivanting around the world.

She travels a lot, never staying in one place for more than a week. She hides her green eyes behind brown contacts and alternates between blonde and brunette. There's not much she can do about the burn scars all over her body except cover them with clothes and scarves and hats, and she cusses out Nick Fury in her mind for not giving her more of a heads up. She avoids all the SHIELD bases she knows of like the plague and practices basic evasive tactics to avoid being tailed. That part is easy, treating this like any other mission she's been on. It's the loneliness at night that gives her pause.

She presses her luck about three months after her supposed death and heads to New York City and stays for four days.

She walks around Central park where she knows Steve liked to run. When she doesn't see him, it doesn't concern her right away; it's a big park and it's not the usual time he goes running. She winds her way closer to the tower, hoping to catch a glimpse of any of her teammates. A few times she sits at a café across the street from the tower and discreetly watches the door for any sign of people. She stays for hours, but she only ever sees Pepper come or go.

Disappointed, she leaves the city. She shouldn't have even come in the first place, what if she was recognized and put everyone in danger again? It was a stupid and selfish decision on her part, and she'd never be able to live with herself if something happened to one of them because of her. She had told herself going to the city was to check up on the Avengers and make sure they were actually still alive, but deep down she knows it's because she wanted to see them.

That night Fury contacts her on a secure line. She takes out the photos that were sent to her months ago while he talks, the ones that made her leave. He informs her that there are still no leads as to who sent them, and she gets so frustrated that she almost hangs up on him then. She wants to be mad at him for this whole thing, but she knows not all of it is his fault. As soon as he hangs up she tries looking for connections on her own.

There were ten photos that had been sent to her, individual shots of all her teammates and then a few shots with three or four of them, and in every single photo their faces were crossed out with what she knew to be blood. The last picture was of her, and it was stamped with a bloody handprint. There was no accompanying note or return address and the person who had dropped it on their doorstep had deliberately kept their face hidden, so there was no way for her to tell where it had come from. But she knew a threat when she saw one. She knew this meant that they were coming for her whoever 'they' were. So she'd left to protect the rest of them, her family.

Part of her hopes that if they can catch whoever sent the photos it would be safe enough for her to return to the Avengers. She likes to imagine their reactions once they realize that she's not, in fact, dead, and they all greet her with open arms. But the logical part of her knows that even if she is able to come back, things between them wouldn't be okay for probably a long time. They would realize they grieved for nothing, that it was all a waste and they would probably be angry with her. Maybe enough that they wouldn't want her on the team again, and she knows she wouldn't be able to live with that.

She wonders if there's anything in this world that can make things alright again.

* * *

_Is anyone reading this?_


End file.
